They had adopted her two years earlier, after her mother died. Rene said they were “emotionally abusive.”

While staying at friends’ houses, she met a 14-year-old boy on Facebook who asked her to send photos and then offered to let her come stay with his family. That family included an older female cousin and her boyfriend, who had two children. Rene became their babysitter.

“All was well at first,” she recalled. “Then it was, ‘Oh, we need you to make some money.’ I thought they were talking about selling drugs.”

They dressed Rene in skimpy lingerie, posted photos of her on a social networking site and sold her body.

“I felt trapped,” she said. “I didn’t know what to do, because I had no place else to go.”

At first, the boyfriend gave her half the money from her "dates," for which he charged $80 to $200, depending on the sex act. Then he started keeping all the money. Rene thought about escaping, but whenever the cousin attempted to leave, the boyfriend would beat her. Rene feared the same treatment. She asked that her full name not be used.

For several months, she was sold an average of 10 times a day. She smoked marijuana to numb the despair. She was sold to a businessman, right there in his spacious corporate office. She was sold to a police officer. She was sold repeatedly to a “regular,” who knew she was underage.

In March 2017, she was apprehended as a runaway and began receiving services to deal with her trauma. She eventually helped detectives build a case against her former pimp by taking them to hotels and homes where she’d been sold. He was arrested last January and in June was indicted on a charge of continuous sex-trafficking of a person.

A big part of Rene’s healing has been coming to terms with what happened to her.

“I know I can’t just shut it out,” she said. “It’s not about accepting it, but being open to it. If I don’t deal with it now, it will come back and haunt my future relationships.”

Melissa Fletcher Stoeltje has been a reporter for more than 30 years. She began her career as a calendar listings/file clerk at the now-closed San Antonio Light, where she went on to write for the Sunday magazine She then spent eight years writing features for the Houston Chronicle.

She returned to her hometown in 2001 and has worked at the Express-News since then in various capacities – columnist, feature writer, social services reporter. She currently covers general assignments for the Metro section.

She holds bachelor's and master's degrees in English from the University of Texas at San Antonio and has won a number of local, state and national journalism awards during her career.